The Antidote

“All humans are irrational” September 24, 2007

The human race is not divided into the irrational and the rational, as some idealists think. All humans are irrational, but there are two different kinds of irrationality – those who love old ideas and hate and fear new ones, and those who despise old ideas and joyfully embrace new ones. Homo neophobus and homo neophilus. Neophobus is the original human stock, the stock that hardly changed at all for the first four million years of human history. Neophilus is the creative mutation that has been popping up at regular intervals during the past million years, giving the race little forward pushes, the kind you give a wheel to make it spin faster and faster. Neophilus makes a lot of mistakes, but he or she moves. They live life the way it should be lived, ninety-nine percent mistakes and one percent viable mutations.

The Eye in the Pyramid, First Book in the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

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aaaaaah, the ability to not fear . . . i love change and i am known to hop about from one job to another seeking change (not a good career move. . . ;) and yet i still find myself fearful. my ideal is to be a Nophilus but that Neophobus side of me keeps popping up and getting in the way.

perhaps we are all both Neophobus and Neophilus and the fab few manage to put aside their fear long enough to move beyond themselves!

Another pseudo-scientific superficial analysis that depends upon nominal fallacy for its effect. Neophile and neophobe. There are certainly people who fit these descriptions; but to expand it into the aeons… That would require a slightly more scientific approach. This reminds me of the fads of the past few decades: the right and left brain explained everything for people in the 70s; the intravert/extravert was the heuristic of choice for some in the eighties. Why do people who want to frame the world in their own interpretations for the good of man almost always resort to simple binaries? Us and them; good and evil; neophile and neophobe; Republican and Democrat; democrat versus totalitarian; right and wrong. There is more to the Yin-Yang than just two. People aren’t such simple entities. And, the complete lack of fear does a sociopath make.

Zeugitai doesn’t get it. Novels and the ideas they present require scientific back-up now? Additionally, Robert Anton Wilson, as a quick glance at the video Maybe Logic shows, is no defender of Aristotelean either/ or binary thinking. Your best bet is to read a novel as a literary experience. If you want to argue with Wilson, read one of his non-fiction books. But presenting a critique of a quote with no context is pretty silly.